By: Dr. Meghna Guhathakurta

If one were to take a stroll down the campus of Dhaka University or the adjoining campus of the Bangladesh Engineering and Technology during the past couple of weeks (Autumn 2002) one would be in for a shock. In place of bubbling students going about their business of studying or simply chatting away with friends or waiting for the bus, one would be met with the sight of student-less campuses filled with blue-clad policemen and women dressed to the hilt in riot gears. Curiously, they would be clustered around monuments, which dot the campus of Dhaka University, commemorating historical struggles such as the Language Movement of 1952 (the Central Shahid Minar) and the Liberation War of 1971 (sculptures such as Aparajeyo Bangla and Shopardo Shadhinota). The background to this story is the following.

The triggering incident, which led to a mass upheaval of general students of Dhaka University, (i.e. students who are not cadres of the two mainstream parties, BNP and Awami League) was a police raid of a female student's dormitory (Shamsunnahar Hall) during the night of 24th July 2002. The incident led to the injury and arrest of several innocent girls alongwith trumped up charges against them and the provost of their hall. It was allegedly reported that the provost who had been appointed during the Awami League regime and whose term was due to end in September had been unduly ousted by the new administration, and that she and some of her cronies had started a movement against the University administration and the government party cadres (Jatiotabadi Chhatra Dal) which led to a law and order situation which in turn compelled the police to raid the hall. These allegations were proved false in the course of time, but what did happen was that the police worked in compliance with University administration and Chhatra Dal cadres to attack and abuse innocent girls in the middle of the night. No doubt from the next day onwards, streams of protest rendered the air as students from all quarters demanded justice for the police atrocities and accountability of the University administration. As demands for the resignation of the Vice Chancellor and the Proctor rendered the air, the administration decided to close the University for an indefinite period, with the order for immediate vacation of residential halls. Usually such steps are taken to defuse situations such as these, but this time the general students were not to be daunted.

Instead of simmering down the movement gained ground as students defied police barricades and took position in the Central Shahid Minar and declared a programme of fasting to death unless their demands were met. In the face of many threats from the police and Chattro Dal cadres, they stuck to their post and finally success came with resignation of the VC and the proctor on 31st July.

In the meantime students' movements were going on at the adjoining campus of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology demanding the trial of the murderers of Soni, a female student who fell victim in the cross firing between factional rivalry of the Bangladesh Chhatra Dal in the campus several months ago. But instead of taking any positive steps towards resolving the issue, the University administration committed the mistake by giving show cause notice to the students who demanded justice for Soni's murder. This angered the students even more and though a new VC was instated, he proved just as intransigent to the demands. The situation at the BUET campus became even more volatile as the administration made use of the 1961 Act of the University, which prohibited any teacher or student to participate directly in politics. In the case of Dhaka University this law was revised by the Act of 1973, which constituted Dhaka University as an autonomous institution. However in the case of BUET and Dhaka University, the government was trying to use the situation in an attempt to ban students politics on campus and hence the police had direct orders to quell any demonstration by using force. This power was exercised by the police when with the growing involvement of civil society, their movement fuelled into the gherao of the administrative building. The police responded by lathi charging and tear-gassing, until the halls were vacated and BUET too closed down for an indefinite period.

But unlike the Dhaka University movement, which gained strength even after the closure of the University, the students of BUET were marched off the campus under strong police vigilance and were not allowed to re enter the campus area and take up position anywhere. Nor were any other demonstrators or processions (be they students, cultural activists, or civil society) allowed to use the central Shahid Minar as their platform, which is something unheard of in the whole history of Bangladesh... or perhaps not the whole history! This is where I reread the events mentioned above in the light of the history of democratic practice in Bangladesh.

The students' movement in Bangladesh has always been in the vanguard of progressive democratic protests against militarization, cultural repression and economic exploitation. This is witnessed by the role they played during the Language Movement of the fifties, the Mass Uprising against the Ayub regime of 1969, the Liberation War of 1971 and the anti autocratic movement against the Ershad regime in 1990. Monuments commemorating these events, such as the ones mentioned above, have therefore time and again served as platforms to remind and inspire people to fight against regimes of oppression. There has therefore been a progressive tradition linked to these monuments. They provided cultural activists a platform to speak of a secular culture and practice in an environment overshadowed by fundamentalist fervour. They provided writers a space to speak about their rights to freedom of speech and beliefs. They provided students with a focal point through which to gain inspiration from history and to think critically and constructively about their future, about the kind of society they would like to see themselves living in. Any establishment, which was bent on domination by force would naturally find these spaces of resistance, challenging to its authority and threatening to its existence. Hence their aim would be to restrict or even eradicate them as symbols of resistance from the minds of the people. This was exactly what the Yahaya regime of 1971 had in mind when they brought in the Pakistan army and started blowing up the Shahid Minar and cutting down the banyan tree (botgaach) beneath which students used to congregate. By the same logic (sic) they even massacred the family of Madhu who used to own the famous canteen on campus called Madhu's canteen, where student leaders use to meet and plan their demonstrations! Is it not therefore in the same vein that current BNP-Jamaat led coalition government is instructing the police to make these spaces out of bounds for the students and the organized public at large! The evidence definitely points that way. Let us look at some of the antecedents and implications of the Dhaka University students' movement to explore this matter in depth.

Although the police raid on Shamsunnahar Hall was the immediate triggering factor to the student's protest movement, certain incidents on campus had been responsible for generating sparks of dissent against the new administration, even prior to this incident. These incidents were essentially campus-related but had links with the overall ideological bias of the newly elected Government formed by the BNP-Jamaat alliance. First, the new administration had systematically tried to 'clean' the Teachers Students Centre, which was a focal point for cultural activists, e.g. poetry recitation groups, theater groups etc. , of all outsiders. It was mentioned that only those who were currently students and possessed ID cards would be able to hire rooms for rehearsals or even sit in the adjoining premises. As benign as this step sounded in the language of administrative practice, it could not be denied that such measures also contained an ideological element. Cultural activism or the cultivation of secular and progressive ideals through various art forms have had a significant contribution towards the practice of democracy and free thinking in Bangladesh. As such they have often been in clash with religious orthodox thinking in politics and society. The struggle to uphold these values therefore constituted a site of contestation in itself. For example early this year, when the pro- Jamaati media started writing against the celebration of the first day of Spring (Boshonto Utshob) or the Bengali New Year (Pohela Boishakh) as being unislamic, students and young people celebrated in the streets with a vengeance, defying these strictures. Students have also been demonstrating in the campus against the cutting down of trees by the University administration in order to build a center for the learning of Persian art and culture. It seems that the University was given a donation by the Iranian Cultural Centre for this purpose. The protest of the students was not only based on environmental considerations but also against the unplanned way that the decision was taken. The final build-up was provided by another administrative measure, which angered the general student populace. This was the planned way in which the Proctor's Office tried to get rid off boy and girl couples sitting together around the campus (the infamous juti-uchhed obhijan). Dhaka University area has always been a place where there was lesser segregation between the sexes than in other public places. The administration tried to invoke a proctorial law from the colonial period, which stated that if a boy was seen to be talking to a girl without prior permission, he was to be fined. The evolution of Bangladeshi society has by nature overgrown the uses of such a law, and its unjust invocation and crude implementation in the name of morality by the University administration fuelled the anger of the students. Many girls protested and were given a show cause notice by the proctor. At this point a police raid in a girls' dormitory for whatever reasons, proved to be the last straw on the camel's back!

The fact that the student's themselves invoked the basic premises of democratic practices, which was upheld by the symbol of our Liberation War, (the right to freedom of speech, the right to form groups and practice ones own cultural beliefs) was therefore an inevitable outcome of the whole situation. Many girls, who were residing in Shamsunnahar Hall at the night of the raid, expressed their fears in the following manner: "We were not born in 1971 and had not witnessed the Liberation war ourselves. But we had heard stories from our parents about the terror they felt when they heard the boots of the military marching outside or the dreaded thumping on the door." One girl said, that she felt that same dread when they heard the boots of policemen on the corridor. Many girls had locked their rooms from the inside and when the police started shouting abuses and banged on the doors, their minds made a connection with a period of history which they personally had not witnessed but was engraved deep in the collective unconscious mind of an oppressed people. It was little wonder therefore that in the protest marches that followed students did not give partisan slogans, but they did raise their voices against the collaborators of the 1971 war.. the Jamaat-e-Islam and Shibir it's student branch. They broke the police barricades to form what they called the muktanchal (the liberated area) near the sculpture of Shopardo Shadhinota. A daughter of a friend, a medical student, when passing by this area witnessed spontaneous performance of street theatre by the students of Fine Arts Department. They were drawing satirical portraits of the power relations between the University administration and the ruling party cadres. The girl (in her early twenties) later admitted that she had felt she had been transported to a 'muktanchal' of the Liberation War, i.e. the areas which were liberated of Pakistani Army Occupation by the Muktibahinis ( the freedom fighters).

Thus one can understand that when after the closure of BUET, the police and at times BDR forces were stationed in and around these historical monuments, it demonstrated a siege not only of those sites where students might rally round in protest, but also a siege of the very symbols of democratic practice and resistance which the people have cherished in their memory for so long.; memories which have a capacity to release the flood gates of consciousness. This is something to be dreaded by power-driven establishments. Milan Kundera in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting had put it very succinctly: "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting!" The Pakistanis with all their military might had not been able to curb this memory. How can it be possible for a host of policemen and their masters to accomplish such a task?
 

2004

Dr. Meghna Guhathakurta, Professor, Dept. of International Relations, University of Dhaka

Courtesy: Drishtipat: Women of 1971 Campaign to Assist Seven War Affected Women